Column - The downside of voter ID

Thursday

Jan 27, 2011 at 10:25 PM

By Bob HallFor the StarNews

Despite a budget crisis that could lay off thousands of teachers, Republican leaders in the N.C. General Assembly want to spend millions on a plan to make voters show a government-issued photo ID each time they vote (except, oddly, when they vote through the mail and don’t show their face at all).
Requiring voters to show an official photo ID with a current address sounds like a common-sense way to stop someone from voting in your name. But before jumping on this bandwagon, consider what you’re getting for the price you’ll pay.
The price is not small.
It comes in the form of your grandmother being told she can no longer vote because she stopped driving and now her ID is outdated. The plan would add new burdens for your kid in college, the city bus rider, your friend who is blind, the young couple who moved from one part of this county to another and your sister who changed her name when she married. It will mean longer lines, more hassles and time-consuming provisional voting at the polls.
It will also consume millions of tax dollars. Lawmakers in Missouri estimated the cost of implementing a photo ID law that survived court scrutiny would be more than $12 million, including the cost of supplying free IDs to voters without one, a modest education campaign, additional poll workers, and more investigators to process provisional ballots.
And what do you get in return? A warm, fuzzy feeling that nobody can steal your vote? Think again.
It’s already a felony to lie when you sign in to vote in North Carolina or to vote illegally. Partisan poll observers and others can challenge voters, and an ID with a verified address is required to register in the first place. These and other provisions are effective. Cases of fraud that a photo ID would prevent are extremely rare – only 18 cases out of 4.3 million ballots cast in NC in 2008.
Extensive national studies show that voter impersonation happens so rarely, in states with or without a photo ID requirement, that it’s more a matter of gossip than reality. In truth, you are more likely to be hit with lightning than have somebody vote in your name.
So you’ll be paying for essentially an imaginary benefit. Sort of like spending millions for extra cops to enforce a new law against wild boar tearing up your front lawn. Is this necessary?
You have to wonder why Republican leaders, sent to Raleigh to fix the budget and economy, would focus their energy on a voter fraud problem that hardly exists.
The answer is not pretty: It turns out the voters most heavily affected are the ones Republicans think don’t generally vote for them, including thousands of people of color, students, people with disabilities and low-income voters.
In South Carolina, where Republicans promoted a similar plan (unsuccessfully), state election officials determined that 7 percent of the registered voters did not have a driver’s license with their current address, and they were disproportionately Democratic voters. Seven percent translates into more than 400,000 registered voters in North Carolina.
Sadly, the GOP plan for “voter protection” looks more like a scheme to push away unwanted voters and increase one party’s power.
It’s very similar to what the Democrats did 100 years ago when they used the poll tax to disenfranchise black voters who were siding with Abe Lincoln’s Republican Party. Now the tables are turned and the Republicans seem eager to erect new barriers. In the name of protecting one vote, they would impose an unnecessary hardship on thousands of other equally qualified voters. Who’s protecting their vote?
Even observers who think a voter ID may have some merit wonder why Republican lawmakers would devote so much energy to this crusade rather than focus on balancing the budget and stimulating new jobs.
Or to ask the question more plainly: How many schoolteachers will lose their jobs so government funds can be used to implement what looks like the modern version of an old-fashioned power grab?

Bob Hall is executive director of Democracy North Carolina, a nonpartisan organization based in Raleigh that advocates increasing voter participation and reducing the influence of money in politics.

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